I like the books at http://www.cadquest.com/. There are currently complete series of books for WF4, WF5, & Creo 1.0. See the book "Advanced Design", it has chapters for assembly. You will be able to see the table of contents, but in order to determine the exact content you should ask them (I no longer have accesss to my CADQuest books, so I cannot provide this information).

I really appreciate all your response and I am exploring all the different suggestions as well. I found E Cognition to be very helpful as well. Brian Martin has been a help in the time of need what a blessing he is to this site. The real answer to this question is I was hoping that someone that took the PTC Advanced Assembly Class from a VAR would be willing to sell me his or her book and CD with the class files. I consider this the best of the best when it comes to a great book and tutorial. I am trying to take the class on Advanced Assembly here in Pittsburgh PA., but the VAR only teaches this maybe once a year. They need to get 6 or 8 students before they will commit. I know that PTC frowns on people selling their books, but loosen up people if you educate the people then the Corporations will buy the modules. So if anyone out there has this book for sale with the CD I will pay a fair price. You can bill my Pay Pal account before you ship. Here is my email account if you want to get in touch with me off the PTC grid.

I really appreciate the link to the VAR's I will write a generic email and send them all one. You would think that PTC writes, publishes and prints all these books for their VAR's to hold classes on Advanced assembly for WF 5.0 and they probably have thousands of left over WF 4.0 books left over. Instead of throwing them all away they should market them to the users of their software. Anyway, we use WF 5.0, but I would buy any book on Advanced Assembly for WF 3, 4, or 5

Well your idea paid off. I emailed Boundary System and asked them if they would sell me a book on Advanced Assembly and they have decided to give me one. Now, that is a great VAR and a real blessing to me.

I think that I found something that a few people may be interested in.If you go to the WF 3.0 advanced assembly tutorial at PTC LMS you can find all the part and asembly files that are used with the PTC University book. Along with this PDF you can complete the course. Thanks to Valadimir and his links I stumbled across most of this.

Vladimir, Thanks for the great sites. I had no idea this request would turn out to be so..... good. Hey Brian shoot me an email and tell me what you said? I never learned pig latin very well. Actually I forgot all about it.

Hopefully people notice that I do my best to remain positive, upbeat, and constructive on PTC Community. I tend to be pretty passionate about my work and the tools I use to perform my job. Having used PTC products for over twenty years, I've invested a half my life and most of my career in this software. While most days it's pretty easy to be a cheerleader... other days it's much harder.

Vladimir... thank you for posting the links to the video. I watched it... and the Best Practice Academy idea is something I've advocated for a long time. People need to know contextually how to use the software rather than simply learning the picks and clicks. Most of the respected books on PTC software just give you a tour through the functions without much explanation or discussion of WHY you use specific tools in specific situations. This has always been the missing piece to Pro/ENGINEER training. It seems like PTC is finally trying to address this need. This is long overdue.

However... and I am trying to be as constructive as possible here... that video was terrible. It was overlong, needlessly complex, tremendously boring, and of dubious usefulness. Assembly Methodology is a fantastic topic for a Best Practice Academy topic but the execution was sophomoric. The video starts with a nearly 10 minute long explanation of the Best Practice Academy concept. This should have been a separate video. We're treated to a constant picture-in-picture of the instructor which is needless and lends nothing to the instruction. In fact, it makes the screens and text so hard to read, they're just blurs even at full screen resolution. The information contained in the video approaches important topics but clearly needed a sharper focus.

Major flaws:

No script. Having an expert "riff" off the cuff and stumble through the lesson as he fumbles for words is neither useful nor professional. This video could have been shortened by 7 or more minutes just by scripting the text.

Overuse of whiz-bang video effects. We see the instructor on screen for no reason. He's in a box (which is so large it wastes 1/3 of the video screen. Then, later, he's choma-keyed over the model tree. Why? When I owned a video production business, there were always competitors who had fancy video effects. They'd always overuse them to the point of distraction under the flawed assumption that the effects made the video better. They do not. Effects should enhance the video. If there's no reason to use them... don't.

Poor content. Lurching tone from topic to topic. The video was supposed to be about Assembly Methodology, not Best Practice Academy. Inclusion of dubious methodologies like Layouts muddies the focus. A simple video cannot cover everything in one monolithic episode, nor should it try. The content should be FOCUSED and specific.

While I applaud the concept, I have to characterize this attempt as a solid miss. I looked for a method or link to send feedback regarding the video directly to PTC. There is no such link. This is also a serious misstep. Again, I'm pleased they're trying something new but if they plan on putting out more videos like this, they're going to be disappointed with the reception they receive. I have less sophisticated video tools and I could produce a more useful, professional video on this topic with a run time of 10 minutes or less.

If anyone has a way to contact PTC regarding this video, please post it here or feel free to forward my comments.

"Large assemblies can become difficult to work with and unwieldy. The large assembly management tools of Creo Elements/Pro 5.0 (formerly Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0) can significantly improve the user experience by interactively displaying only necessary assembly information at any given time. This recorded webcast will cover the following topics: Creating Simplified Reps, Shrinkwrap, On-Demand Simplified Reps, Zones and Envelopes, Reference Control, Strategies for Working with Large Assemblies."

THANK you for the link. You're obviously a very active member and contributor to Planet PTC. Sincerely I want to thank you for your commitment to help your fellow Pro/E users.

Please don't take my comments in the remainder of this email as any reflection upon you or the links you've provided. I know Daniel and other users will appreciate the link. The video contains some good information and I think the content was very well presented and relevant.

BUT.... (you knew that was coming)

BUT... is someone at PTC doing illicit drugs while at work?! Seriously?? The audio quality of this video is so poor it sounds as if the presenter is speaking from within a public restroom. There's horrendous echo and it's very difficult to focus on the material because I'm so distracted trying to understand what's being said. Literally they could have created better audio is the presenter were recording through two SOUP CANS WITH A STRING TIED IN BETWEEN THEM.

How in the world can PTC be so tone deaf as to create videos like this. The audio quality of this 63 minute presentation is so terrible, it sounds like an amateurish YouTube video. The previous link you posted was the presentation from Best Practice Academy which sounded wonderful but was over-produced, poorly focused, and included all sorts of extraneous information of dubious usefulness.

Can they not get it right? Is it impossible to produce a video with great content (like Large Assembly Mgmt video) with decent audio (like the Best Practice Academy video)? It's like they can't get both pieces of the puzzle to fit at the same time!

Am I the only one going insane over this?

Maybe it's just me.

-Brian

PS: Thanks again for the post Vladimir. I really do appreciate the contribution to this topic.

All valid points. I did some research on this video and it was actually an internal piece used to give users a flavor of what the Best Practice workshop covers. The intent was more of a value prop pitch as well as a snapshot of a method.

When repurposed for external view, the video wasn't optimized for the web. Which is why the format isn't ideal and the audio is poor.

You're certainly not insane. Admittedly, it's poor execution on PTC's part to repurpose the video for external consumption.

Thanks Dan... I thought I was losing my mind. I think Best Practice Academy is a wonderful idea. I think it's been a long time coming but I'm really glad to see this new approach to training. I hope the bugs and kinks get worked out so that this becomes a real value-add for PTC customers.

I think it's CLOSE... just needs some refinement. When I produce tutorials I really labor over them in an attempt to make them pitch-perfect. Once PTC hits that point with Best Practice Academy, it's going to be tremendous.

Well this post has some really good threads. They are all very helpful and seem to have a life of their own. I need some advise on what to do about some training. I have recruited (10) people including myself for an in house AAX WF 5.0 class. I'm in the process of choosing a training source. I have the option of a so called PTC rep which calls himself our new account manager which we seem to get 3 or 4 a year. We are a direct account meaning no VAR type. Anyway, this mysterious account manager quoted 3,400 a day plus instructor expenses. This is for a 3 day class in advanced assembly in house.I also have a man that I am speaking from HTI that is a PTC VAR account rep that wants to quote me. We had training from HTI a year ago when we went from WF 3.0 to 5.0 and the instructor was brilliant. Here are my questions:

1. Which source should I use HTI or my mystery PTC account manager?

2. If we use are own laptops for the class does WF 5.0 come standard with AAX or do you need the Flex3C lic

By "HTI" are you referring to 3HTI? They're a VAR based on the east coast. They may have asked to quote your training class. I just wanted to seek clarification on that point.

As for the "random account manager" from PTC, we've just had the same thing happen to us. Our account manager of many years was promoted. The new manager has been very pleasant but it's still jarring to switch representatives. We had a real trust and rapport with the old manager. We'll have to work with the new rep for awhile to build that same level of comfort and trust. But this is always the case, isn't it?

So for a 3-day class, you were quotes $3400 a day plus instructor expenses, hmm? Wow. Let's discuss this a bit more offline and I'll give you my impressions on the best way to go. Congratulations on pulling together 10 people for a class... sometimes that's tough to do.